Page 29 of The Last Hope

And he takes a better look at my features. At the blood I drew along my cheeks and lips and neck.

“I know whatdimmeans all right,” I growl. “You aren’t the first boy who’s ever called me dim-witted and dumb. But you still make no damned sense. My ma died giving birth tome.”

I’m Mykal Kickfallfor that very reason. Unlike Court andFranny, I was never adopted and I always knew who my birth parents were.

“No, see, you’re human,” Stork says plainly. “Briana Kickcastle can’t be your mother.”

“Briana could’ve been human.”

“She wasSaltarian,” he emphasizes. “I have her ID card in my barracks on theLucretzia.”

My world is overturning. I feel like I’m falling face-first in three hells.

I lick blood off my lips. “No…”

No.

“My pa,” I say slowly, “he said a villager stole her identification after she died.”

This near, I eye Stork as he eyes me, and I meet his bitter sorrow. Lifting the corner of his lip, almost rolling and glassing his gaze. No link needed to spot the icy rawness.

“He was my father,” Stork says, “and he probably believed whatever he told you. He couldn’t have known the truth any more than you could’ve.”

I release my hand off his chest. “And what’s the truth?”

“His baby was taken—Iwas taken, and a human baby of the same age was swapped in place of me.Youwere swapped…” He loses his voice while staring at my worn face, nicked with scars and cragged from blizzards.

I sense Court shaking his head, and he asks, “Why would anyone put a human baby on a Saltare planet in a Saltarian galaxy?”

Stork looks away from me and then bends down to collect the glass at our feet. “That’s enough answers for the day.”

Does he know who birthed me? Who would’ve raised me if we hadn’t been swapped? But I know, well and good, that my pa is still my pa. No blood relation and dead—he will always bemypa.

He raised me. Taught me most of what I know. How to spear, how to shoot an arrow off a bow. How to whittle and how torespect the gods. How to howl at the wild so the wild will be howling back.

But he’s not justmypa now.

He’s someone else’s.

I squat and help pick up glass with Stork. Looking at him, mostly. “Do you want to hear about our pa?”

Stork just places more large shards, dripping in liquor, in his palm. “Why would I want to hear about the life you lived that could’ve been mine?”

I hear his nasty tone, but I press onward. “He would’ve wanted you to know him. That’s why.”

Stork blinks a few times, then slams a fist into the cabinet. The silver metal pops open. Sliding far out to reveal a bin, and as he rises, he dumps broken glass in the squared compartment.

I do the same, though fumbling a lot more, and I watch him ignore me. He seizes his armor and then treks to the cockpit.

Can’t be too surprised that didn’t go right. I’m bad with words and with people.

SEVEN

Court

The starcraft rattles from passing space debris, and we strap into our jump seats for the duration of our travel. I stare out at the vast darkness of space through the bridge window. And obsess over the pieces of information I’ve gathered:

We were released from a brig because we were traded for something.